


Tense and Release

by Vae



Category: Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead - Stoppard
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-04-03
Updated: 2009-04-03
Packaged: 2018-09-13 12:19:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9123337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vae/pseuds/Vae
Summary: Rosencrantz remembers. Guildenstern isn't so sure.





	

"I remember this," Rosencrantz said intently, staring down. Or maybe it was Guildenstern. He was going through one of the phases where he wasn't sure again, but he wasn't sure it really mattered, because Guildenstern, or maybe Rosencrantz, wasn't sure either. Even if he'd never admit that.

"No, you don't," Guildenstern returned automatically. He was also staring down, but seemed a lot more sure about the memory. "Because this hasn't happened yet."

Rosencrantz rolled his eyes, and covered Guildenstern's hand with his own. "But that's _why_ I remember it," he insisted. "I couldn't remember it if it hasn't happened, could I?"

Guildenstern paused, and his hand paused, and Rosencrantz briefly wondered if he should just agree, because he didn't want that hand pausing. "That's why you don't remember it. Because it hasn't happened."

"But I _do_." Really. He did. Clearly, and in great detail. That sort of detail, like the pause in Guildenstern's hand and the twist to his wrist when it started moving again and the little callous just there, on the side of his thumb, matching the ones on his palm from fencing practise. "So it's happened."

"You're getting your tenses muddled again," Guildenstern said conversationally. "It's happen _ing_."

Well, he couldn't argue with that one, clearly it was happening, he could tell, he could feel it, and whether it was past or future or not it was certainly present and therefore becoming part of the past even as it took future through present to make it into past. "It's happened," Rosencrantz repeated. "I know it has. I remember it."

"Your memory works in strange ways." Guildenstern frowned in concentration, and there it was again, that slide of causality, the inevitable, inescapable continuum. "You can't remember it yet. Maybe you mean that you will remember this."

He would. Probably. Almost certainly. Well, if he remembered it already, he'd go on remembering it, wouldn't he? And that meant that somewhere, somehow, it had happened. Hamlet would know. Or Horatio. They had fancy words about memory and past and future. "I _do_ remember...oh."

Guildenstern grimaced, and wiped his hand on Rosencrantz's doublet. "Well, it's happened now."

Rosencrantz nodded, and looked down at Guildenstern's hand. "I remember this."


End file.
